This seminar explores the history and theory of literary translation in the West. We will read and discuss major theoretical texts that have delineated the field of translation studies from Cicero and St. Augustine to Du Bellay, Dolet, Schleiermacher, Goethe, Benjamin, Jakobson, Borges, Nida, Derrida, Berman, Spivak and Apter in order to work our way through the various aesthetic, ethical and political questions raised by the practice of translation. We will also compare different translations of literary texts in order to examine how the linguistic and stylistic choices that translators must make carry ideological weight. At the end of the term, each student will prepare either a literary or theoretical analysis or an original translation accompanied by a critical introduction. The class will be taught in English, but participants should have working knowledge of at least one language other than English.

This seminar takes as its principle that anxiety and uncertainty provoke our thinking and seeing more effectively than pre-established categories, and that initial confusion can clarify more interestingly than straightforward structure. Among the kinds of problems that might be entailed in the visual and verbal interpretation are: how figure relates to ground, foreground to background, abstract to figural, detail to overall or global, the relation of romantic and contemporary wandering line in character and in art to the stroll of the flaneur and the flaneuse, the singular to the series and to the collective (it might be fun to bring in the fascinations and frictions of writers’ and artists’ colonies here), the regular to the irregular, the miniature to the epic, the expected to the extremes of landscape, seascape, and cityscape, and, above all and always, how do we relate our interpretation of reading to that of seeing. The overall notion is that the unresolved and problematic – on the part of the creator and the observer-participant - is more gripping than the resolved, an idea determined in itself to be modestly provoking, without rewarding itself the optimistic label of the provocative. Which issues we will finally work on will be determined in relation to the interests of the gathered group. Certain of the artists and writers joining us, among others, are likely to inhabit a stretch from Mallarmé and Manet to Meret Oppenheim, from Gertrude Stein to Sartre, from Artaud to Beckett and Breton, from Paula Modersohn-Becker to Rilke, from Claude Cahun and Unica Zurn to Virginia Woolf, Francesca Woodman and Joseph Cornell, modernists all. Note: Students interested in registering for courses in other departments are encouraged to do so during the first day of registration, to assure securing a spot.

Course Descriptions

This course on the history and theory of the novel will begin with a set of readings (Scholes, Bakhtin, Brooks, Genette, Barthes, Sedgwick) on aspects of narrative and narratology. We will then read closely six novels beginning with La Princesse de Clèves and Les liaisons dangereuses, followed by Ourika and Madame Bovary, and ending with Du côté de chez Swann and Djebar's Ombre sultane. Our discussions will be informed by critical readings for each text.

Goals of this course include: gaining an understanding of the sweep of the French novel, reading novels intensively for their narratological, thematic and ideological/political and gender scripts, writing analytical papers on literary texts, doing literary research, reading critical theory critically, and improving spoken and written literary/critical French.

Work for the course, over and above class preparation and participation, involves two short papers 5-7 pp), a final paper (topic developed in consultation with the instructor) and a final exam.

The course will be conducted in French; written work will be in French for students in French; students from other departments may write their papers in English.

In French The following selection of writers hailing from North Africa and the Middle East will be studied in this course with an eye on highlighting the religious and ethnic diversity of the Arab world : Andrée Chedid (Egypt/ Lebanon/France), Edmond Jabès (Egypt/France), Tahar ben Jelloun (Morocco/France), Malika Mokeddem (Algeria/France), Albert Memmi (Tunisia/France) and Leila Sebbar (Algeria/France).

The condition of being embedded in more than one culture has had a considerable impact on the writings of the novelists on the program. We will discuss that imprint by examining tropes pertaining to the crossing of boundaries such as the notion of exile, home, the ethics of hospitality, the importance of language to identity, and the construction of self and the perception/construction of the other.

In recent times, we have seen a heightened preoccupation with the question of war which consequently has become a prevalent topic in multiple domains. We will therefore open up a discussion about the discourse on war which can be both historical and figurative and which reevaluates relationships between the individual and the collective and their confrontation with the other. Such a discourse raises questions on perception of otherness – the operative metaphor in discussions surrounding war. This will lead to an analysis of the notion of identity, a topic which has been under scrutiny by writers and theorists alike for the past few decades.

The course will focus first of all on the very phenomenon of myth: how it relates to the cultures that produce it, and the ways in which it communicates. Various specific myths, such as the myth of Orpheus, will be examined, along with their manifestations in two films, Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1950) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), which is based on a French novel, along with various other works found in French literature and film. The course will also focus on various contemporary theories of myth from writers such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, René Girard, and Mircea Éliade as well as on several non-French theorists such as Joseph Campbell and Carl-Gustav Jung. Works of French literature and film will be studied as illustrations of these theories.